Motorola Making Another Direct-From-Google Phone

Although Nexus One sales estimates haven't exactly blown everybody's minds so far, it seems that the cell-phone-you-can-only-buy-from-Google experiment is going to continue. Motorola's co-CEO announced today that his company is working on device for it.

According to Scott Moritz, co-CEO Sanjay Jha said while discussing Motorola's Q4 earnings that his company will release "one direct-to-consumer device with Google" sometime this year. Jha also mentioned introducing 20 Android smartphones in 2010.

These statements help clear up some issues that surfaced last week, when a vice president at Motorola said the company intended to release 20-30 Android devices. Even allowing for regional variations, it was a little hard to imagine how they could all be markedly different from each other.

Unfortunately, Jha provided little else in the way of Android- or cell phone-related information this morning, so other details regarding what's on tap remain unknown. It's just a fair guess that the direct-to-consumer advice will be another range-topping model, and that it isn't too close to coming out.

As always, we'll see what happens. Finally, for the record: Motorola's Q4 report didn't go particularly well, with its stock down 11.42 percent so far today as a result.